AHOPE Boston

Access, Harm Reduction, Overdose Prevention and Education, commonly referred to as AHOPE Boston or AHOPE Needle Exchange, and formerly called Addicts Health Opportunity Prevention Education, is a needle exchange and public health initiative of the Boston Public Health Commission.

AHOPE primarily serves homeless people with physical and mental health conditions.

History
AHOPE's programming initially operated out of an outreach van that distributed sterile syringes to people who use drugs around Boston. In 2013, the program opened a location in the South End and saw a 300% increase in people accessing services.

In 2014, AHOPE distributed 150,000 clean needles to intravenous drug users, to prevent the transmission of HIV and hepatitis C. In 2018, according to Boston 25 News, AHOPE "distributed about 18,100 Narcan kits, receiving more than 23,000 reports of overdose reversals as a result." In 2020, despite the risks of transmission at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, AHOPE continued to provide services to drug users, out of fear that stopping them would cause a major outbreak of HIV. In 2022, according to WGBH, AHOPE "collected nearly three times the amount of syringes" that it distributed over a period of eight months.

The program offers informational handouts, support groups, HIV testing, and individual counseling. It uses high tech drug testing services to identify the presence of xylazine, fentanyl, and other substances in street drugs. Every Thanksgiving, AHOPE hosts a dinner "for individuals struggling with homelessness and addiction" around Mass and Cass. AHOPE's offices are decorated with the obituaries of people who died as a result of drug overdose. Many people credit AHOPE with saving their lives.

AHOPE advocates for the government to legalize supervised injection sites in Massachusetts.

Collaborations
AHOPE works closely with the Boston Public Health Commission program, Providing Access to Addictions Treatment, Hope and Support (PAATHS), to help people with substance use disorders access treatment. This collaboration gives drug users who distrust medical providers an alternative way to ask for treatment.

Access, Harm Reduction, Overdose Prevention and Education assisted Boston Healthcare for the Homeless Program (BHCHP) in their creation of a medical observation and stabilization space for intoxicated patients.

Outreach workers from AHOPE work with doctors from BHCHP on the outreach Care Zone van, funded by the Kraft Center for Community Health at Massachusetts General Hospital, to provide patients with food, wound care, physical examinations, and opioid agonist therapy. The Care Zone van works in areas of Boston that report the highest amount of overdose. EurekAlert! wrote, "By the end of 2019, the program's 24-foot mobile medical unit had recorded 9,098 contacts with people living with addiction in areas identified as overdose hot spots in and around Boston, distributing 96,600 syringes and 2,956 naloxone kits to rapidly reverse opioid overdose."

Honors
In 2018, the Boston Municipal Research Bureau honored Leroy Ivey, AHOPE's outreach coordinator, with a Henry L. Shattuck Public Service Award because Ivey "led the way in helping Boston confront the unprecedented opioid epidemic presenting itself locally."